Fire and Fury by Michael Wolff

Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House by Michael Wolff


I'm not going to give this a star rating for the time being. I'm just going to share my thoughts for now.

For me, the first question is how do I know anything in this book is true? Well, the most convincing thing is that there isn't a lot of "new" information in this book so much as there is a more complete picture based on behind-the-scenes information from inside sources. A lot of what is in this book has been public information in terms of Trump speeches, interviews, and tweets. The author himself was given White House access and claims to have been there for a lot of the events. About a half of the book is information and impressions that must have been provided by Bannon. Bannon's information appears colored by his dislike of Jared and Ivanka Kushner but does not appear otherwise significantly biased. (By which I mean that Bannon is pretty open about the ways in which he's evil, and isn't too bothered about it.) Jared Kushner himself leaked a great deal of information which seems to be in play in the book as well-- especially trash talk about Bannon. That leaves very little which I have any reason to doubt. Perhaps there isn't any good reason to believe the details of Trump's relationship with Melania, but that appears to be it.

Even though there's not a lot of new or shocking information, I think the book's full narrative of events is useful. For example, before reading this book, I kept thinking that maybe Donald Trump was "crazy like a fox." But after reading this, my impression is that he's just really ignorant (more than I thought) and even less curious about reality than I thought he was. He seems to believe he can just invent his own reality and buys into it to a certain degree. All of this is puzzling and troubling and definitely gives different coloring to how I view recent political events.

The conclusion is that Trump is unfit to be president according to his own advisors. Additionally, his advisors are unable to educate him or restrain him in any meaningful way. He is inconsistent and has poor impulse control. The "fire and fury" quote which the title uses is from Trump's threats to North Korea, but the book ends before the bulk of his North Korea threats. The whole world is at danger from this presidency and everyone knows it, but the people with the power to do anything about it, Senate Republicans, refuse to do anything.

PS: The Prologue and Chapter 1 aren't written as well as the rest of the book. If you find the beginning annoying you might want to reserve judgment until Chapter 2.

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